Kavalek in Huffington: The Hand of God in Chess?

9/7/2011 – The drama surrounding the game David Navara vs Alexander Moiseenko continues to occupy the chess world, and has made it into the mainstream media. In his Huffington Post chess column GM Lubomir Kavalek felt a deja vu: a game he had played in 1965 wound down to a similar Q vs R+P ending which he proceeded to win. Kavalek also philosophises about offering a draw in a winning position.

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The Hand of God in Chess?

By GM Lubomir Kavalek

A quarter of a century ago, the phenomenal Argentinian soccer player Diego
Maradona scored a goal with his hand during a quarterfinal match against England
at the 1986 FIFA World Cup in Mexico. The referee didn't see the hand-play,
allowed the goal and Argentina went on to win the Cup. "It was a hand of
God," Maradona said later. Garry Kasparov used the same quote after an
incident during his game against Judit Polagr in Linares, Spain, in 1994. The
world champion finished a knight move, changed his mind, grabbed the knight
again and moved it to a different place. Like in any sport, there are chess
players who try to win at all costs, bending the rules in their favor. But there
are also noble chess warriors who believe in decency and fair-play.

It was a moment of disbelief when the game between the Czech David Navara and
Alexander Moiseenko of the Ukraine finished Sunday at the 2011 World Cup in
Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia. The official website showed the result as a draw, but
the position was clear: Navara was about to deliver a checkmate in a few moves
and Moiseenko had no way of escaping.

Moiseenko-Navara, World Cup 2011Final position

Great online scramble ensued in an effort to find out what happened in Siberia.
It was an important game: the loser would be eliminated from the competition,
the winner would have a chance to increase his prize money and qualify for the
next world championship. Navara, in fact, confirmed in an e-mail after the game
that he offered his opponent a draw. The match was tied 1-1 and was headed to
a tiebreaker the next day. Did Navara have a reason to be so gracious? Does
it pay to be nice?

We know the answer to the second question. Navara won the tiebreaker and also
eliminated his next opponent, another Ukrainian grandmaster, Yaroslav Zherebukh.
The Czech was on his way to the quarterfinals.

The game with Moiseenko took a dramatic twist in the following position:

Moiseenko-Navara, World Cup 2011

Navara tried to play 35...Be7-d6, but when he was reaching
for the bishop he accidentally clipped his king. Moiseenko's reaction was spontaneous.
"King moves," he said, trying to take advantage of his opponent's
misfortune. He knew well what Navara's intention was, but the temptation to
win the game outright overwhelmed him. After any king move, black loses the
bishop and the game. Navara acknowledged that he touched both pieces, the king
and the bishop, but he wasn't sure which piece he touched first. What to do?
The arbiter arrived and Moiseenko decided not to insist on the king move. The
players agreed to continue, but a certain discomfort prevailed till the very
end.

At one time they reached an endgame I was familiar with

A deja vu from my duel against the Hungarian grandmaster Levente Lengyel from
the tournament at the Bulgarian coastal resort of Varna in 1965. The victory
in the game lifted me towards a GM norm and I became a grandmaster later that
year.

Lengyel-Kavalek, Varna 1965

Black can win by running his king behind the e-pawn, somewhere around the square
e2. To achieve it, Black has to use zugzwang, forcing the rook or the king out
of their best defensive set-up. Any advance of the pawn weakens the defense
and helps to win. This is easier said than done, but in those days games were
adjourned and you could hit the endgame books and learn what to do. I found
out the endgame was already analyzed by Andre Danican Philidor in the second
edition of his Analyse du jeu des Échecs published in 1777.
I didn't even have to make the long king's journey.

The game ended the following way:

Note that in the replay windows below you can click on the notation to
follow the game.

You don't have the luxury of adjourning today, but you can practice it against
an endgame tablebase run by a computer. The electronic programs can be intimidating.
They can tell you, for example, that a mate is achievable in 46 moves. Navara
knew how to win the e-pawn, but after he did it he had 50 moves to mate Moiseenko.
If he could not do it, the game would be declared a draw according to the FIDE
rules. The Ukrainian GM played the defense as well as he could and after Navara
made a few inaccuracies, Moiseenko's chances to draw increased. As a matter of
fact, he could have sent the game beyond the 50-move limit with a precise play,
but that was humanly impossible.

The Czech was winning, but he could not forget what happened earlier in the
game. "My opponent is a decent man and we had a misunderstanding,"
Navara wrote. " I don't know who was formally right." He felt the
match should not have been decided by this crazy game or by a protest without
sufficient evidence. He didn't want to be accused of advancing unfairly and
offered a draw. They began the tiebreaker next day with a clean slate and the
better player won.

Both players received the Fair Play Prize after their match specially created
by the Governor of Ugra, Natalia Komarova. "I lost not just to a very strong
player, but also to a noble man," Moiseenko commented. "I think David's
decision to offer me a draw is unique for the chess world. No one else would
do it under such circumstances."

Generosity can sometimes backfire. At the end of a strong tournament held in
a German spa Baden-Baden in 1925, Karel Treybal, having a clearly won position,
accepted a draw offered by the American champion Frank Marshall.

Black is threatening to mate with 33...Nb4+ 34.Ke4 Rf4 mate. To prevent it,
White has to jettison couple of pawns. Rather than resigning, Marshall resorted
to his last option: he proposed a draw. The Czech lawyer was the only amateur
in that event and he didn't want to interfere with the American's chance to
make more prize money. He accepted Marshall's offer.

It didn't go well with a group of players, led by Ernst Grunfeld (the same
one behind the Grunfeld Indian defense) and they protested against the result.
Treybal was reprimanded by a jury for being so generous to Marshall. He defended
himself by saying that he didn't see a clear winning way, but the jury didn't
buy it. "A player of Treybal's strength should be able to play such a winning
position for a win," they concluded.

The Huffington Post is an American news website and aggregated blog founded
by Arianna Huffington and others, featuring various news sources and columnists.
The site was launched on May 9, 2005, as a commentary outlet and liberal/progressive
alternative to conservative news websites. It offers coverage of politics, media,
business, entertainment, living, style, the green movement, world news, and
comedy. It is a top destination for news, blogs, and original content. The Huffington
Post has an active community, with over one million comments made on the site
each month. According to Nielsen NetRatings, the site has around 13 million
unique visitors per month (number for March 2010); according to Google Analytics
the number is 22 million uniques per month.

See also

3/27/2018 – Sergey Karjkin didn't succeed in posing serious problems for Ding Liren and after, what he called, a "terrible blunder", he had to scramble to save a draw. That left Caruana in great shape to win the tournament. Mamedyarov struggled to find winning chances with black against Kramnik, but in the end that game ended drawn as well. Caruana, needing only a draw, was in command against Grischuk and even won the game to finish in clear first by a full point! | Photo and drawings by World Chess

See also

1/28/2018 – Magnus Carlsen won the 80th Tata Steel Masters which was decided in a blitz tiebreak over Dutch number one Anish Giri. The players contested two blitz games with 5 minutes plus 3 seconds per move, with no sudden death Armageddon game needed. Vidit played solidly to earn a draw that was enough to win the Challengers, as Korobov could not manage to pull off a win with black on-demand. | Photo: Alina l'Ami TataSteelChess.com

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